>Trey,
> See my reply to Larry.
>
>..where zip in ('220461934','220461973','22030')
>
>I tried
>
>..where zip in ('220461934','220461973','22030%')
>
>but it doesn't work. :(

I was just about to address this, e.g., in your caller - assuming VFP for this -set the zip values to PADR(lcZip,9,"_") and make the SQL call sim to this (I modified pubs.authors to have 9 digit zip code - the ones below have multiple records already - I changed one each to be 9 and left the rest at 5)

select au_id, au_lname, au_fname, zip 
   from authors 
   where 1 in (patindex('84152____',zip), patindex('94301____',zip))